The author and the interviewer faced each other in an opulent room  resplendent with dark wooden fixtures and deep red velvet upholstery.

The setting fit the subject they had met to discuss--the famous, and infamous, Everleigh Club, Chicago's elegant world-class brothel.

"Doesn't it look like what you think a nice whorehouse would look like?" asked Chicago Tribune reporter Rick Kogan.

The Wednesday night conversation between Kogan, who also hosts "Conversations with Extraordinary People," and  Karen Abbott, who wrote "Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, took place at Maxim's: The Nancy Goldberg International Center an 24 E. Goethe,

Abbott's book is an intimate look inside the Everleigh Club, possibly the world’s most high-class brothel, and its central role in a cultural and moral war that shook America at its core. It may not be as hot as Harry Potter, but "Sin" is shaking up the literati.

The event drew a mixed crowd of all ages. In the entry way, waiters passed trays of hors d'oeuvres and wine. A table was piled with books for sale. The demand was too high for the 6:00 p.m. event, so a  second one was added at 8:30 p.m.  

"We talk about brothels and madams and Chicago turns out," said Bradford Thacker from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

"I think it's the dress," replied Kogan, referring to Abbott’s caramel-colored strapless ensemble, accented by long earrings and jeweled sandals.

One of the requirements to be an "Everleigh butterfly" as the Everleigh Club’s ladies were dubbed, was the ability to look good in an evening dress. Kogan, seemingly besotted, assured the stunning Abbott that she certainly would have qualified for an interview, at least, at the Everleigh.

Abbott, a former journalist in Philadelphia, is currently based in Atlanta, but retains her Philly accent.

The book, she said, was initially motivated by family whisperings of a great-grandmother’s sister who disappeared in Chicago in 1905,  around the time when the book is set. It is not the story of Abbott’s ancestor, but of Chicago at that time, and the cultural ether into which her relative may have vanished.

"America was experiencing a major identity crisis," Abbott said.

She described Everleigh Club madams Minna and Ada Everleigh as a "20th century amalgamation of Martha Stewart and Madonna" – the sisters who created an air of aristocracy when in truth their family had been, according to Abbott, "decimated by the Civil War."

Abbott spent 18 months working on the book, to the occasional chagrin of her husband, Chuck Kahler, who wanted to make sure they would be able to pay the mortgage.  

She avoided online researching, preferring instead to delve into microfilm to find what she called "quaint glimpses into 19th century life that won't come up in an Internet search," such as newspaper advertisements.

She told a story of speaking to Minna and Ada's great niece, who made a point of noting that she was eating caviar--a favorite at the club-- while speaking to Abbott on the phone.

The story of the Everleigh sisters, said Abbott, is the story of so many women of that time. From humble and repressed beginnings, they found their version of independence. Abbott called them "amazing businesswomen."

She described their ability to cultivate relationships, especially with the press. Tribune reporters, according to Abbott, visited the Everleigh Club frequently, and with the proprietors' compliments.

"They got press when they wanted and were able to not get press when they didn't want it," she said. "[The Everleighs] basically ruled Chicago ."

If class can be brought to the sex trade, the sisters Everleigh were the ones who could do it. Arriving at 2131-2133 S. Dearborn, they were dismayed by the poor décor and "girls who looked like they had logged more miles than the Chicago Limited," said Abbott.

So they converted the property into a luxurious space with a $15,000 gold piano, ladies who could recite Balzac and Longfellow – although, Abbott recounted, one frequent guest told the sisters that "teaching the girls poetry was educating the wrong end of a whore" -  and a gourmet dining room modeled after a Pullman train car.

Of course, going to a whorehouse for the food is like reading Playboy for the articles – those who believe the story, deserve the truth.

There is a tendency to romanticize the early 20th century, a time often perceived as far more quaint than it might have been. "But [the Everleigh Club] was a whorehouse," Kogan said. He asked Abbott about her "moral struggle, as a woman, not to glorify  the prostitution trade.

Abbott neither soap-boxed for feminism nor made any excuses for her topic. Many came to the trade under tragic circumstances, she said, including at the Everleigh Club. Tragedy happened there too, same as in any other so-called house of ill repute.

"One harlot was found dead in an alley with her hands cut off and her diamonds gone.” Abbott said.

She  listened to Scott Joplin every morning to get herself in the right mindset to write the book. Motivation was sometimes hard to come by. Writing had become a frustrating task. "Sin" was, she decided, a final effort before throwing in the towel.

She told herself if she didn't sell the proposal, she was done with writing. For a while, if not forever.

"It wasn't fun for me anymore," she recalled.

One day, after the book had been completed, pitched and quietly sold to Random House, she received an email from the publisher.

"We are excited about this," it said.

She braced herself for critics who would lambast her details, demanding to know how she could be sure of the emotions.

Abbott did intensive research, she said, poring over details, but ultimately her goal was to author a story, not a text book. Novelists in her writing group helped guide her by writing phrases like "information dump" or "I am so bored" in the margins when she overloaded them with facts and figures.

"I'm not an academic,” she said.  “I'm not a historian. I'm a journalist and [my] job as a journalist is to tell a story."

The issues that are prevalent in "Sin in the Second City" – immigration, religion, morality, corruption – still resonate today.

She said she was devastated when she typed the final sentence. Pictures of Minna and Ada Everleigh now hang in her home.

"Karen Abbott, I adore you," said Kogan, before she was whisked through the kitchen to the foyer where she sat at an autograph table, a long line forming in front of her, and another crowd queuing up at the entrance, coming to see the second show.